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Ram and Hardware Error

chocolate_monsta

Posted 24 February 2006 - 05:55 PM

chocolate_monsta

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Member

7 posts

Hi There,

Hoping someone can help!!!! recently brought a laptop through a friend, a refurbished pentium 3 thinkpad 21. it had 512 ram but it kept turining itself off (blue screen, dumping physical memory message) so we took it to a comp friends house... he said it was the ram, tried some of his, it didnt work, but ran a ram test (some silly program that takes like 3 hours) and it came back that97% of one of the sticks wasnt working... then, because we had tried formatting it, and putting on xp - (rather than 2000) and each time it came up with a hardware error, it was confirmed yes it was the ram... so, toddle off to computer shop and fork out cash from ram that costs cos its for an old comp and had to be sd ram - comp working HEAPS faster and no longer swithcing off, but go to format again and it comes up again with hardware error!!!???????? argh!!!!!!!! also the comp is riddled with viruses and now internet explorer just switches off every few clicks.... apprently the windows 2000 would have been "ghosted on" by ibm, which is why there is crap on there, and how they got in on there....

am desperately trying to find out if we can fix it so i dont have to drive it 2 hours back to the place i got it from and wait months for ibm to fix it.....!!!!!!!!!!!

does anyone have any ideas??????????? (comp friend has gone away and cant help - im stressing cos i need it for work!!)

please reply!!!!!!!! thanks!! luv me!!!

Edited by chocolate_monsta, 24 February 2006 - 06:17 PM.

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Samm

Posted 24 February 2006 - 06:03 PM

Samm

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3,476 posts

Welcome to G2G

Can you tell me :
which OS are you currently running? XP or 2000?
Are you saying that the hardware error occured when you tried to format the drive? If so, how were you attempting the format & what was the actual error?

chocolate_monsta

Posted 24 February 2006 - 06:10 PM

chocolate_monsta

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7 posts

it is NTcol or something... trying to format through dos, to load XP. currently have 2000 NT.

my bf wanted to try and format through windows, as he thought maybe this was just a virus or something, but i didnt want to risk it just in case i do hav to take it back to IBM and they crack it.... the ram defiantely was stuffed, but now we keep getting the same error!!!!!!!! ARGH

Samm

Posted 24 February 2006 - 06:17 PM

Samm

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3,476 posts

OK, you can't format the C drive through Windows. Windows will be using that the partition so it won't allow you to format. The only way to do it, is to boot from a bootable floppy disk or CD & run the format command from DOS. Bear in mind that the C drive is likely to be formatted with NTFS (not FAT32), so you would require a NTFS compatible boot disk. Is this what you did?

chocolate_monsta

Posted 24 February 2006 - 06:27 PM

Samm

Posted 24 February 2006 - 06:29 PM

Samm

Trusted Tech

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3,476 posts

OK so you booted from the XP CD right?
Did the XP installation get as far as asking you to select the installation partition & give you the option to delete the partition or did the error occur before that point?

Samm

Posted 24 February 2006 - 06:47 PM

Samm

Trusted Tech

Member

3,476 posts

Right. Without knowing the exact error message, it's very difficult to diagnose. What I will say however is this :

1) Have you checked the hard drive for errors? If you can't do this in Windows because of the virus problems etc, then I suggest you run chkdsk or similar utility from a bootable floppy. Whichever utility & whichever method you use, I suggest you check for bad sectors as well (surface scan)

2) You may find that the only way to install XP from fresh is to format the disk first using a bootable floppy disk. If you need a bootable floppy with NTFS support, download the one in this link :

The disk it creates contains Killdisk which can be run from the A:> prompt after booting from the disk. Just type in killdisk at the prompt & follow the instructions. This will completely wipe the drive clean.

Be aware however that there is a risk that after doing this, you still won't be able to install XP. If that is the case, then you probably have a hardware problem of some description.